


Five ways things might have jumped the rails

by bratfarrar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Death Fluff, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-08-19 15:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8215058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: What did you do, Sam doesn't ask after the graveyard, after the bullet and their father's approving ghost, after Dean stops spending his nights in rundown bars and his mornings washing off the smell of someone else's sheets.





	1. Chapter 1

**1.[Like Real People Do](https://youtu.be/yrleydRwWms)**

_What did you do_ , Sam doesn't ask after the graveyard, after the bullet and their father's approving ghost, after Dean stops spending his nights in rundown bars and his mornings washing off the smell of someone else's sheets.

 _What did you do_ , he doesn't ask. _What was done to you, what was taken?_

He doesn't ask, because Dean spends his nights with Sam now, as well as his days. They watch football together, the way they did when Sam was young and enamored of Brick Holmes. They knock elbows in tiny booths of tinier diners, and spend an entire day sampling every single pie and pastry available during a slow Tuesday at Ronnie's Bakery in a town that consists of three streets and a parking lot. They drive down empty highways under skies full of restless clouds: sometimes Sam sings along with the tapes because it makes Dean laugh; sometimes Dean sprawls loose-limbed in the passenger seat and silently watches Sam drive, the hum of the road beneath their wheels the only music either needs.

There's something in Dean's eyes that Sam has never seen before; perhaps it is joy, he tells himself, and doesn't ask.

 

**2.[Angel of Small Death & the Codeine Scene](https://youtu.be/-bmp4QWzHak)**

She'd spent centuries planning her assault on the tower of Sam Winchester's virtue--centuries, and all of that thrown away within five minutes of meeting his brother.

Such lips were made for kissing, after all, and Dean had breached his own defenses when he traded himself for Sam. Might as well make the most of it--and what better way to convince Sam they were all on the same side?

So she peddles the story of having made her own such sacrifice, of wanting to spare him the same horrors, of still being capable of love, and Dean clings to her like she can patch the yawning hole in his armor. _I couldn't do this without you_ , he whispers one night while Sam sleeps uneasily in the other bed. _I have to be strong for Sam._ And his eyelashes dance against the curve of her cheekbone like butterfly feet, like the giddy caress of love. _I know you can't save me_ , he tells her while they're safe there in the dark together. _I know. It's okay._

She runs a careless fingernail along the arc of his ribs and he shudders once within her embrace.

 _It's okay_ , he says again. _I understand, but Sam won't. You'll need to take care of him when I'm gone._

 _I will_ , she promises, tucking her head down so her breath sits hot along the soft skin of his neck. _I'll take such dear care of him. Like he was my very own._

Her kiss against his throat is full of teeth.

 

**3.[Arsonist's Lullaby](https://youtu.be/XoQvbDROucQ)**

He kills Ruby when she comes back to him--she failed Dean once, why should he give her a second chance? He kills Ruby, her own knife buried in her spine, and leaves the empty corpse staring sightless up into the sky. And then he takes all his fury, his incandescent rage because the universe **shouldn't exist** without Dean walking in it with his shoulder knocking against Sam's--he takes that and coils it away as carefully as a fuse because he has a job to do and he can't afford to burn up yet.

With Dean's amulet knocking hard and hot as a coal against his breastbone, he goes town to town, hunter to hunter, witch to witch. He begs and bargains and cheats everyone who crosses his path, pulse as heavy and even as the drumbeat in a war march. He kills what needs killing until he's elbow-deep in blood, and follows every road on every map until he finally comes across the right door with the right lock and the right key. Then he knocks on that door, knuckles streaking the weather-worn wood a deep dark red.

When it opens, the flames behind it mirror the ones that have filled his eyes ever since his brother's death.

 

**4.[Work Song](https://youtu.be/nH7bjV0Q_44)**

Sam doesn't cry himself to sleep the night after he buries Dean. He doesn't cry. He doesn't sleep. He lies on his back in the exact middle of the bed, one hand hanging over the edge--the hand next to the night stand--the other cupping Dean's amulet against his heart. He lies on his back and stares up at the dark ceiling and tries to believe that the world hasn't come to an end, that the sun will come up in the morning and everything will continue the way it always has.

The sun still hasn't come up, though the faint promise of it sits gentle against the room's guarding curtains, when someone knocks on the room's door.

It's--

No. He can't have heard that, because that would mean he'd gone mad, and **that** would be a betrayal of Dean's sacrifice.

But it comes again, same knock, and then fumbling at the door handle, so Sam gets up, floor as uncertain beneath his feet as in a dream, and goes to tell whoever it is to piss off.

The person on the other side releases the latch the same moment Sam turns the handle, so that they open the door together.

 _Miss me?_ Dean asks. His eyes are shadowed, but his teeth gleam white in the dim glow of the parking lot lights. He smells like grave dirt, once the shock breaks and Sam wraps himself around his dead brother, heedless of how the amulet's sharp edges bite into them both. He doesn't realize he's weeping until Dean starts petting his hair and making shushing noises.

 _It's okay, kiddo_ , he says, fingers curling gently against the base of Sam's neck. _I could never leave you._

 

**5.[In a Week](https://youtu.be/Dh7k69AeM7M)**

They hadn't made it past opening the car door before the blood loss got too bad and they'd both collapsed, so now they're propped together against the angle of the door hinge, Sam sort of draped over Dean, head down against Dean's shoulder despite the height difference.

It's not so bad, despite Dean's unhappiness over the family of squirrels that's set up shop in the passenger footwell. _Baby deserves better_ , he grumbles when it rains.

 _Not the first family she's housed_ , Sam counters, settling a little more closely into Dean's embrace. _Maybe it's only fitting._

 _Maybe_ , Dean grudgingly concedes after the first batch of babies starts romping around in the back seat. _They are kind of cute._

 _So are you_ , Sam laughs. _Still worrying about the car even now._

 _Not like I have anything else to do_ , Dean counters. _News flash: watching grass grow really is as boring as advertised. And you suck at I Spy._

Sam could argue that Dean's the one who taught him how to play, but he'd rather simply appreciate the quiet of their resting place. _Remember--?_ he asks instead each time.

Remember, remember, remember--?

And Dean always does, while the Impala slowly rusts beside them and the small woodland creatures play amid their bones.


	2. Time Stamp for "Work Song"

Dean doesn't eat, just drinks whiskey like clear cold water. He orders Sam peach pie and licks the taste of it off Sam's lips, and Sam begins to crave sweetness for the first time since he was a child enamored of marshmallow fluff.

Dean doesn't sleep, either. He sits by the window, curtains drawn a little, watching the headlights of the cars going by, and Sam gets used to the streaks of brightness across his eyelids, learns to fall asleep to the sound of Dean sharpening knives or disassembling and reassembling the same guns over and over. Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night, sleep-fogged and still drifting, and in the morning he can't tell whether he remembered or dreamed the press of Dean's hand against his heart or the base of his spine.

Dean still drives, though: dark glasses on and windows down, singing along like a rockstar to his favorite albums and elbowing Sam until he joins in on the choruses. For the first time in years Sam begins to remember the carefree moments they'd had as boys, the heady days when Dad had finally given Dean permission to use the car and the Impala had become Dean's baby. The distances between hunts become elastic, like the warm expansive summer nights they'd reveled in the year before Sam left, only this time the endless road is all theirs.

It's too good to be true, Sam knows, back in his hindbrain where John had drilled certain reflexes deep. There's a catch somewhere--there always is. But it doesn't come and it doesn't come, and Sam gets into the habit of eating burgers on Dean's behalf, just to see the way Dean watches with eyes both pleased and longing. Dean's jokes are still dumb, and his hands still steady when he aims a shotgun, and the only thing that makes him flinch when they go hunting demons is a knife held too close to Sam's eye.

Each night Sam falls asleep sated to his bones and every morning he wakes hungry for more of the same, and day by day Dean feeds him all the things he didn't know he'd spent a nearly lifetime starving for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (It's platonic licking, I swear. Please don't revoke my gen writer's card.)


	3. Time Stamp for "In a Week"

It takes a week for Sam to realize no reaper's coming for them: a week of Dean being too obsessed with the damage being inflicted on the Impala's interior to really notice that, well, they're **dead** , and it looks like this time it's going to stick.

 _Kind of funny, isn't it_ , Sam finally interjects, because eventually Dean's bitching gets to be too much for even him.

 _No, it's not,_ Dean retorts, and if he was still alive he'd be expansive in his frustration. But he's dead, so his corpse just eases back a bit more into the crook of the door hinge, dislodging Sam enough in the process so that his head can slide down onto Dean's shoulder more securely. _She's bound to rust from this, and it's going to wreck havoc with her electronics._

 _Dean,_ Sam counters, because while it's better than just about all of the alternatives, he'd rather not spend eternity listening to Dean complain about his car. And some of that must come through with that one word, because Dean finally falls silent. For the first time since they died, Sam can properly appreciate the forest surrounding them, the quiet isolation of their final resting place, nothing but the woodland animals to keep them company.

It's kind of nice.  
  
After a long while of no sound aside from the wind blowing through leaves and scattered birdcalls, Dean grumbles, _Well, are you going to enlighten me?_

 _Hm?_ Sam's been contemplating an arthritic daddy-long-legs as it hesitates down the length of his right leg.

 _I'm biting--what's kind of funny?_ Dean's tone is slightly sullen, but that's the way he is when cranky--Sam's long since stopped taking it personally.

 _Oh, just that our first case together after Stanford was a wendigo, and all these years later we got taken down by another wendigo. What're the odds of that?_ The daddy-long-legs clambers down the hem of Sam's jeans and begins a circuitous route away from their bodies, into the deep shadows of the forest floor.

 _Pretty damn small, I'd guess._ Dean's chin settles a little closer against the back of Sam's head. _Think this is it for us?_

_Would you mind if it were?_

Somewhere off in the distance a blue jay is screaming about thieves; across the clearing from where they are, a squirrel rummages through the thick leaves trying to remember where he buried his dinner; the lowering sun filters through the summer leaves, staining all the visible world a deep, shifting green.

 _Guess not,_ Dean answers after a while. _But if you'd just waited 5 seconds before collapsing so I'd had time to close the door--_

Sam's dead, so he can't whack Dean on the arm. But that's okay, because Dean's also dead and so can't whack **him** when he laughs long and helpless and joyful.


	4. Time Stamp for "Arsonist's Song"

Occasionally he can admit to himself that killing Ruby might have been a mistake. She might have proved useful, down here in the fire and horror and emptiness that sometimes threatens to swallow him whole. Somehow the darkness is worse when there's nothing hiding in it; if nothing else, she would've been someone to talk to. But then he remembers how useless she was to him, how she utterly failed to help him protect Dean from Lilith, and the fire he carries now beneath his skin roars up to such height that he's surrounded again with light--of a sort, and for a little while. The darkness never really goes away down here, and the emptiness is always there, if just a little further off.

Before, when he'd been merely mortal, he'd always imagined Hell as a crowded place, souls and demons and furnaces all stacked on top of each other. Time doesn't really mean anything, but if it did, he could count days--weeks, years, endless millennia--between encounters with anyone, tormented or tormentor or futile escapee. He always burns them away into nothing, of course, regardless. Anyone down here is a danger to Dean, and that's all he really cares about anymore.

Dean's soul is healing still, so Sam keeps him tucked away in a tiny corner that doesn't really exist except for the two of them, like some shadow-shrouded memory only they share. There's not much to it except a deep bed and a deeper fireplace, a single nightstand with a broken light and a bottle of cheap-tasting whiskey that's never quite emptied.

And Dean, of course, which is all that matters. Not that he does a whole lot except sleep, but--his soul is still healing. Sleep is probably for the best.

Sometimes he rouses at Sam's arrival, pushes himself up out of bed--hair sticking out in all directions, drowsy and slow and always pleased to see Sam. They usually don't talk much, just sit shoulder to shoulder on the end of the bed, sharing the whiskey and whatever memories Dean's dreamed of since Sam's last visit. Sometimes he continues to sleep, a near-boneless bundle sprawled across the bed, with the light of the fire flickering across one pale shoulder or picking out the delicate shell of an ear. Sam stays longer when that's the case, leans against the bed and watches and wonders a little at the peacefulness of it all.

For a little while, he can forget the fire that always smolders beneath his skin, can simply breathe and love and remember what it meant to be happy, long and long ago.


End file.
